"Big ideas are still in demand".

werbewoche.ch: Mr. Riegel, your career began in 1984 when you accepted the first ADC award.

Hans Peter Riegel (Riverside): I was lucky enough to start my career very young, at the age of just 24, in 1984, immediately as an art director at GGK Düsseldorf, one of the most successful agencies in Germany at the time. After only six months, I had already received five ADC awards, and many more followed. In the course of my advertising career, during which I also worked for BBDO, Publicis and LOWE, I had the pleasure of learning from greats like Michael Schirner, Wolf Rogowski, Karl Gerstner, Vilim Vasata and Walter Lürzer. Above all, I was always working in other countries and met agency legends such as Hans Brindfors in Stockholm, Maurice Lévy in Paris or Allen Rosenshine in New York.

What are the "sizes" today?

Bolt: Good question. When I look at the current scene, I think there is a lack of outstanding minds that existed in the past. There are certainly outstanding advertisers and PR professionals, but there is an overall shortage of top talent.

How do you leverage your competitive advantage of experience and also talent?

Bolt: Our advantage is the diversity and quality of our experience combined with the esprit of our designs. Tanja Hollenstein and I come from different backgrounds in communications. Tanja has a background in PR and corporate communications with extensive experience in digital and moving image media. Like myself, she was appointed to executive positions very early on and has been able to advise high-profile clients.

I bring great experience in classic advertising, but also as a director and producer in the field of moving images and events. Finally, I was one of the first advertisers to work with digital media. I also have specialized know-how in management consulting, and have advised companies in areas such as change management, restructuring and IPOs. Above all, I am a manager and entrepreneur. At the age of 29 I was already managing director and partner of a BBDO agency. Since then I have always been co-owner or owner of the companies I work for. Tanja has these entrepreneurial genes as well.

Who is "Riverside"?

Tanja Hollenstein: Our services are broader than just advertising or PR. We are not a classic advertising or PR agency, but a management consultancy. One part of our services is communication, but our field of activity extends far beyond that into strategic consulting. We offer this because we can and have the experience to do so, rely on an excellent young team as well as professionals who work with us.

What most distinguishes Riverside from advertising and PR agencies?

Bolt: We are not only active in strategic consulting and communication, but also as producers of culture. With the Digital Art Zurich Festival, the DAZ, we have built the largest digital culture event in Switzerland, one of the largest in Europe. In connection with this, we have completely different perspectives than conventional agencies.

Hollenstein: What also sets us apart: We don't pitch. That's an aberration that we're trying to avoid. The bottom line is that agencies pay less for pitches, and the clients are then looked after by juniors instead of the bosses who were still sitting at the table when the pitch was made.

How do you get orders then?

Hollenstein: Primarily through recommendations and networking. We then carefully consider whether to accept a mandate. If we are not convinced of the cooperation in terms of content and especially in human terms, we prefer to leave it alone.

How would you characterize the form of your work?

Bolt: We strive to be lean and agile in every area we serve. Our approach is different from many others in the communications industry that have overly large and costly operational structures. These costs need to be covered on a monthly basis and may require taking on assignments that don't necessarily fit, but are done to pay salaries and rent. Our principle, on the other hand, is to work with the most suitable experts from different countries, depending on the task at hand, and to bring them in for projects as needed. In this way, we can offer our clients the optimal solution, both in terms of content and economy.

Tanja Hollenstein, can you give an example of such collaboration?

As a matter of principle, we do not talk about cases. One of our success factors is absolute confidentiality. We do not advertise what we do for clients. It is not least from such familiarity that a close cooperation with the client develops, a partnership from the very beginning. This allows us to bring in the clients' knowledge and combine it with our holistic approach, which encompasses all disciplines and subject areas. We often start with a workshop that looks at the big picture and condenses it into solution approaches early on. From there, we develop strategic guidelines that are effective in the long term. Which ultimately leads to an equally lasting collaboration with clients.

With Hans Peter Riegel, there was the momentum of the ADC awards in 1984. What was your entry momentum?

My entry moment was the Swissair crash in Halifax. At the time, I was in the agency supporting Beatrice Tschanz in communications. I was fresh out of school and saw firsthand how crucial communication is in such situations. We all knew what could happen if the wrong information got out. That experience shaped me, and I knew that I wanted my professional future to be in the communications industry. I saw the meaningful impact communication can have.

What was your takeaway from that pivotal moment?

Hollenstein: My most important insight was the importance of honesty in communication, then as now. Especially in a time when news can spread at breakneck speed and fake news can surface, it's crucial to be honest and transparent. The way you deal with issues is what counts most in the end.

How do you create trust?

Bolt: What I learned very early in my career is that you have to keep promises. If we tell a client they will have something tomorrow, they will have it. We don't deliver empty promises. We are precise and check things multiple times. Our principle is next to precision, high speed and constant availability. We are virtually always on the job because we know that problems can arise when you least expect it. This sense that professionals are at work, delivering what they promise, on time and within budget, builds trust.

How do you measure success?

Bolt: Our success is reflected in the fact that our clients remain loyal to us. Since Riverside 2020 was relaunched with Tanja, we have only gained clients, not lost any. I see that as a clear indicator of our success.

Hollenstein: Success in our clients' projects is also of great importance. Together we set goals that we want to achieve. The success of the client is our benchmark.

Bolt: Sometimes it's simple things like click-through rates. A project where we have reached almost 500,000 views within a few days or when we get an email that simply says MEGA! as praise for one of our productions. All of this is very motivating.

How do you encourage your customers to be bolder?

Bolt: That's an excellent question and an interesting point. Our goal is always to motivate our customers to think outside the box. We encourage them to say, "Look, if you take this step, it could have an impact, maybe you're going too far in an internal situation, but on the other hand, we say if you don't try, if you stop, you're going to fall behind, you're going to miss the music."

Do you have an example?

One example was a project for a series of image films. We put together a mood clip in a very short time and said, "This is what it could look like." We didn't go to any great lengths, we just went for it because we were convinced we were doing the right thing. We delivered in record time, and the client immediately understood the direction it was going in.

Hollenstein: In the world of moving images, it's particularly difficult to convey things using only sketches, storyboards or animatics. You have to go a step further, and experience plays a crucial role, especially in the communications industry. On a strategic level, it's also about mapping out the framework, identifying opportunities and risks, and limiting the risks in a way that allows you to try things out. This also requires analysis to find out what is possible.

Bolt: Another important point is reputation. It may sound banal, but it is essential: people know us and what we stand for, that we ask questions based on our knowledge and experience, and that we sometimes also address unpleasant aspects.

Hollenstein: Another point is that we always challenge ourselves. We always think that what we're doing is good, but we're always asking ourselves, "Can we do better?" This attitude that we always want to be a little bit better sometimes requires the courage to break new ground. But because we embody this attitude, we can encourage our clients to do the same.

Experience is an important part of your identity and unique selling proposition. But when can this experience also be a hindrance, in a world that is constantly changing?

Bolt: My attitude is always to be open and remain curious. On the other hand, this accumulated experience is extremely important, especially for training young talent and showing them the way. My cultural projects, my experience as artistic director of the DA Z Festival and as an expert in digital media art are of great importance here. This front-edge situation enables me to show others the way. I have trained many talented people, including some very renowned names in the industry. That's only possible if you know how to do it.

Hans Peter Riegel, you have been in the industry since 1984 and in Switzerland since 1989. How do you assess the changes in the advertising industry and especially in the creative sector of the industry?

Bolt: We used to develop campaigns and present them to clients, convinced that it was the best proposal. The customers agreed. Whether the campaigns were always economically successful in the end is another question. But that wasn't the only criterion in the past. Image was actually more relevant. We could make clever and beautiful advertisements, we were designers, artists almost, and thus had a different status, enjoyed greater respect. Over time, however, this respect was lost. Because suddenly everything was measured and evaluated quite technocratically. But also because the achievements of creative people did not necessarily get better.

What do you think are the reasons for this change?

Bolt: The reasons are many. Clients have become smarter and built their own teams for communications and marketing. Agencies were challenged and some parity emerged. Then came Internet development, and many small and agile Internet agencies and creative hotshops formed, while traditional advertising agencies did not take the developments seriously. That was the beginning of the end. The agencies lost their status as creative entities, were degraded to advertising processing service providers. Advertising and PR agencies as we knew them are a discontinued model. In my opinion, there will be no more advertising agencies in ten years at the latest.

That's a grim prediction.

Bolt: It may sound gloomy, but I made similar predictions back in the 90s and they have come true. The agencies as we know them are no longer necessary. There is no need for them anymore. We are the prime example of this development. We provide services like a large agency, but we only need a fraction of their infrastructure because Riverside was designed from the beginning to be innovative and highly efficient.

We'll leave it at that.

You've stated that companies that can no longer find creativity in classic agencies come to you. That's great - for you. But apart from the question of where clients go to find creativity, what might a future model look like in which classic creativity is possible again?

Bolt: The decisive factor is strategy. What we strongly emphasize is strategic consulting. First you have to know what you want to do in the first place. You have to have a basis. We scrutinize every single assignment for its strategic impact. At the same time, we have an immense spectrum of scientific input through our socio-culturally oriented cultural projects. And to be honest, most advertising and PR agencies are hardly in a position to offer such strategic approaches.

The second point is the total fragmentation of the communications landscape, which has split into countless micro-disciplines. Agencies have made the mistake of trying to integrate everything. But it does me no good at all to buy up one agency after another in the hope of securing their know-how.

What are the arguments against it?

Apart from the fact that it is economic nonsense, because most agencies are low-yielding and the return on investment will fail to materialize, this is a misguided approach, because the bought-in units do not work together in reality. They don't come close to covering the "full service" that is promised. As a consulting company - and that's how we see ourselves - we have to master the entire keyboard. We have to know the different registers, but we don't have to play them ourselves. We have to know how to play, where to get individual elements from. But above all, I have to guide the client through this jungle of communicative possibilities.

Which alternative model will prevail?

There will be small teams of highly skilled professionals who really know their stuff, and these teams will be assembled as needed to develop creative strategies and measures. Everything else is craft, technology and execution, and there are plenty of specialists for that who can be found all over the world, especially in the digital sector. The decisive factor is the quality of the team, which must be very competent and creative.

So that means that after the end of big ideas comes the beginning of new big ideas?

Exactly. That's the right way to look at it. Big ideas are still in demand, but you also need clients who are interested in them and with whom you can work on such projects. Then it will work.